They don't really have to. The browser could hand the media off to media player built into the browser. It could allow Quicktime or WMP to handle the media.
That's my point. I don't see me developing to this codec when the problem is solved by OS or flash which is already installed. As to mobile I want to work on windows 7, iPhone os and android. Do I need this technology for that?
It's not clear to me that Mozilla would need to pay anything if it only used h.264 decoders that come bundled with the OS. If Mozilla wanted to go the whole 9 yards, though, $5M per year shouldn't be insurmountable from donations.
Here is an official summary of the h.264 license terms:
They only need to pay the license if they want to support an operating system that doesn't support h264 playback.
Mozilla is doing this for ideological reasons only. It is nice when standards could be based on publicly owned IP, but it is clear that isn't really a big option here. VP8 is so close to h264 encoding that there will most likely be patent lawsuits on companies supporting VP8 (including on Mozilla). Publicly owned IP makes sense for something like HTML (because there are many ways to do page layout), but video encoding and playback is a much narrower field so I don't think Public IP will ever work in this case.
Personally I think it is suicide for Mozilla not to support h264. Promoting an ideological idea is great, but it is not worth sacrificing market share for. Rather then blocking h264, they should work with Google to promote VP8.
Currently Mozilla earns 75,000,000 per year on Firefox. They would save more money by spending 5,000,000 to create a library that could be used by open source operating systems and keep that 75 million flowing in. Most likely the library would have to force the end user to agree to a (free) sublicense, but I don't really know the legal details here. They could still promote VP8. This isn't a one way street.
A more likely outcome of not supporting h264, is supporting it indirectly through Flash. This will just help something even more proprietary (Flash) stick around. Unlike flash, h264 does allow for implementation competition. Web sites could target h264 HTML5 video and h264 in a flash wrapper so they would only need to encode to one format.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asherian
Mozilla would need to pay $5,000,000 PER YEAR to license h264. I don't think that is reasonable.
The author demonstrably does not know what he's talking about, as it's live now and it looks great. The builds are available, download them and try it. Stop taking this propaganda for truth. Try it out....
I see you are dominating the thread again, spewing all this vitriol and propaganda, and then taking the author to task for doing what you yourself are so skilled at.
- You say it's "live now and it looks great," implying that it's already a done deal and ready for prime-time, but in fact you have to download a build of an unreleased product to even see it.
- You say the author "demonstrably doesn't know what he's talking about" by implying that he said VP8 can't do HD when in fact he didn't actually say that at all.
- You talk about VP8 doing "HD" when you know the the stream is highly compressed and barely worthy of the name.
- You quote big numbers in terms of the cash Mozilla would have to pay to support H.264, but don't give any reference, and worse, don't compare it to the actual revenue Mozilla makes. Even if your numbers are accurate, 5 million is a lot of money to an individual but hardly a drop in the bucket for a large concern like Mozilla.
When it comes to threads on video codecs, you are the biggest propaganda machine I've ever seen. Seems to me you've got a lot of nerve referring to anyone else's posts as "propaganda" or implying that others are twisting the truth to their own ends.
It's not clear to me that Mozilla would need to pay anything if it only used decoders that come bundled with the OS. If Mozilla wanted to go the whole 9 yards, though, $5M per year shouldn't be insurmountable from donations.
I don't see the world jumping on VP8 until there are HW decoders. Even if it was better codec than H.264 without that integral part added to all HW it's dead in the water.
Mozilla doesn't have to do anything with H.264 and Firefox users can still get their browser to play back H.264 videos. Either an x264 plugin designed by users or using the OS' H.264 implementation. I figure the former will happen first.
I see Google clearly trying to make a longterm play for the future of the web but the shirt term goal is just going to lead to confusion. We had people that expected LightPeak on the last Mac releases and LTE iPhone last year so I'm sure we'll get people expecting more "miracles" to happen on this front, too.
In a few years is where this VP8 gets interesting. It will have a chance to get mature, to get all the number crinkles ironed out and potentially give MPEG-LA a scare that makes H.264 cost free for all browsers and sites that wish to use it. This is what I think is Google's play here. They want H.264 to become free and are using a slightly inferior free codec to force their hand. If not, then they'll have codec that is 6 years more mature to fallback back on. it's a win-win situation for them.
PS: I also expect patent lawsuits to pop up regarding VP8.
The question seems to now be why did Google decide on the VP8 WebM codex?
Well, it wasn't quality or compression. It wasn't that it was worried about the encumberment of MPEG LA, because it knew damn well that this will attract lots of lawsuits. If they were so worried about Firefox, I'm sure they could have licensed it in perpetuity for way less than $131 million, which is what they paid for the "unemcumbered" VP*. Part of it is a completely retrograde way to keep Flash in the game.
Think back to before Macs could play less than a third of web video. You could play Real and Windows Media, up to a point only. When the "Advanced" Windows Media 9 came out, we were left alone. Only Flash could fill in the gaps, so that websites would only have to post one version for all. Well, for mobiles, that sucks. Much faster (and simpler) is HTML 5 (open) and the H.264 codec. See, if you standardize, things work very well with video. The codec is completely scalable, from Blu-ray video to the smallest of web video. Same codec.
So, if they wanted to help, they would have just paid Firefox's royalties. Much cheaper than unleashing this crap and confusion on the net. Why? Well, they're following Sony's rules: if you make a new format, you build yourself a world all to yourself. And, wonderfully, magically, this is "free!" Good advertising word, that.
*facepalms* Bad move, Steve. At least after writing that Flash article.
regardless what you think. WebM is still "closed" in the sense that it is controlled by Google. Google will always have the final say about what happens to it, unlike H264 which is controlled by a standard body.
The slant in this news story, and many on this site, is astonishing. Why do people feel the need to defend Apple in everything? They're a business with their own vested interests, they're in this to make money and protect their interest...not to be a humanitarian company. Try being more being more objective. This site reads like a state newspaper in China or Pravda. Apple's side of the story is presented in detail, then a token reference to the other side is made followed by a slew of opinions stated as fact to discredit them. You guys can do better.
When it starts to bother you, just remember: There is no spoon.
In other words, PR Agents are everywhere Neo. Ignore the writer in the red dress.
Why not just buy out MPEG LA, release H.264 for widespread use and be done with it?
Google spent over $100 million to buy On2, in order to give VP8 away. I think it's a legitimate question to ask how much money they would have needed to pay to MPEG LA to cover all of their probable royalty revenues, in order to make H264 effectively unencumbered.
Google spent over $100 million to buy On2, in order to give VP8 away. I think it's a legitimate question to ask how much money they would have needed to pay to MPEG LA to cover all of their probable royalty revenues, in order to make H264 effectively unencumbered.
$100M wouldn't scratch the surface of buying them off. Some members of the consortium might not want to be bought out at any price, if they feared the level playing field it created would completely undermine their business model.
The slant in this news story, and many on this site, is astonishing. Why do people feel the need to defend Apple in everything? They're a business with their own vested interests, they're in this to make money and protect their interest...not to be a humanitarian company. Try being more being more objective. This site reads like a state newspaper in China or Pravda. Apple's side of the story is presented in detail, then a token reference to the other side is made followed by a slew of opinions stated as fact to discredit them. You guys can do better.
You must be a Google employee or supporter. You try to present Google as a humanitarian company when in fact Google is evil. Google tries to undermine other companies' businesses buy giving out crapy illegal imitations in order to make a buck selling advertising. Google is in the process of destroying itself by poorly imitating everybody else for a buck in advertising. This model will not work. Google needs to innovate.
Comparing h.264 and VP8 to GIF and PNG isn't quite an accurate comparison.
GIF was already supported by every browser and in wide use before PNG even became a possibility. h.264 is only supported by 13% of the browsers on the Internet, so it has hardly become ubiquitous.
I don't think anyone will argue that VP8 is technically superior to h.264, but we need some sort of format that doesn't have license fees associated with it if it is supposed to be adopted across all browsers.
Articles here are nothing more than a mean to make Apple fanboys feel all warm and fuzzy. The title has nothing to do with the article. The Article itself rambles on with false information. I feel sorry for the people who don't know any better and actually buy into this crap.
The heading of this article suggests that Apple can and will keep Safari/QuickTime from supporting the V8 codec.
But Jobs *allegedly* only referred to a critical article as reflecting his opinion on V8.
To me this suggests that "Apple thinks Google's V8 video codec is flawed and risky" would be a way more appropriate heading.
Especially since a heading like the current, copied to sites like Macsurfer and the likes, will make many people think that Apple will be treating WebM like Flash, which I think would cause unneccessary PR problems for Apple.
Moreover:
It might be time for AI to take alleged mails from Jobs a bit less seriously. You guys are making it seem like the CEO of America's 3rd largest company's first responsibility is to answer customer mails 24/7...
That's precisely the problem. Why would you want to jump into a pool of uncertainty when you don't have to?...
yes, that is precisely the problem... with all but the MPEG LA group. MPEG LA is a known quantity. Who is complaining about mpeg2 video for DVD's, mp4 video, mp3 audio, aac audio? Codecs used within them will always come and go. but H.264 is the official codec put together by this known group of technologists (this same group that we have happily relied on for other adopted and proven technologies). They are pushing the envelope; they want to be unencumbered by rogue patent trolls; they are pooling their efforts; and their efforts are producing good results that need to generate some return.
Likely, the licensing fees will always remain reasonable because the MPEG group will want to keep a simple, sustained and useable framework.
As was pointed out in the article about GIF, it is the supposedly free technologies that become the pool of uncertainty after they are widely adopted. Why would you want to jump into that pool of uncertainty when you don't have to? What for? For a less capable and less mature technology that has to navigate around the MPEG patents anyway? (and whatever other unknown ones are there ready to spring up). It is the MPEG group that are proving the value of their research and breakthroughs, and they are not sitting in an ivory tower somewhere.
Google does not appear to have done its due diligence on this and they are ostensibly jumping on the "Freedom" bandwagon when their record shows them to be less concerned about private data and freedoms than others, such as Apple for one (who are going to protect data going to advertisers as much as possible and whose computers don't phone home or make you verify your software every other minute).
In this type of situation, Apple's motivations are usually patently clear, whether you agree with them or not. Google on the other hand, seems to reveal itself as the murkier pool of uncertainty by the minute.
Comments
They don't really have to. The browser could hand the media off to media player built into the browser. It could allow Quicktime or WMP to handle the media.
That's my point. I don't see me developing to this codec when the problem is solved by OS or flash which is already installed. As to mobile I want to work on windows 7, iPhone os and android. Do I need this technology for that?
Its Republicans way or no way!
Its Apple's way or no way!!!!!!!!
Apple is doing same what republicans are doing.
Saying 'No'.
But...but...Asherian is a Republican; how can this Gordian knot be untied?
Mozilla would need to pay $5,000,000 PER YEAR to license h264. I don't think that is reasonable.
http://www.osnews.com/story/22787/Mo...t_License_h264
It's not clear to me that Mozilla would need to pay anything if it only used h.264 decoders that come bundled with the OS. If Mozilla wanted to go the whole 9 yards, though, $5M per year shouldn't be insurmountable from donations.
Here is an official summary of the h.264 license terms:
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/...rmsSummary.pdf
Mozilla is doing this for ideological reasons only. It is nice when standards could be based on publicly owned IP, but it is clear that isn't really a big option here. VP8 is so close to h264 encoding that there will most likely be patent lawsuits on companies supporting VP8 (including on Mozilla). Publicly owned IP makes sense for something like HTML (because there are many ways to do page layout), but video encoding and playback is a much narrower field so I don't think Public IP will ever work in this case.
Personally I think it is suicide for Mozilla not to support h264. Promoting an ideological idea is great, but it is not worth sacrificing market share for. Rather then blocking h264, they should work with Google to promote VP8.
Currently Mozilla earns 75,000,000 per year on Firefox. They would save more money by spending 5,000,000 to create a library that could be used by open source operating systems and keep that 75 million flowing in. Most likely the library would have to force the end user to agree to a (free) sublicense, but I don't really know the legal details here. They could still promote VP8. This isn't a one way street.
A more likely outcome of not supporting h264, is supporting it indirectly through Flash. This will just help something even more proprietary (Flash) stick around. Unlike flash, h264 does allow for implementation competition. Web sites could target h264 HTML5 video and h264 in a flash wrapper so they would only need to encode to one format.
Mozilla would need to pay $5,000,000 PER YEAR to license h264. I don't think that is reasonable.
http://www.osnews.com/story/22787/Mo...t_License_h264
The author demonstrably does not know what he's talking about, as it's live now and it looks great. The builds are available, download them and try it. Stop taking this propaganda for truth. Try it out....
I see you are dominating the thread again, spewing all this vitriol and propaganda, and then taking the author to task for doing what you yourself are so skilled at.
- You say it's "live now and it looks great," implying that it's already a done deal and ready for prime-time, but in fact you have to download a build of an unreleased product to even see it.
- You say the author "demonstrably doesn't know what he's talking about" by implying that he said VP8 can't do HD when in fact he didn't actually say that at all.
- You talk about VP8 doing "HD" when you know the the stream is highly compressed and barely worthy of the name.
- You quote big numbers in terms of the cash Mozilla would have to pay to support H.264, but don't give any reference, and worse, don't compare it to the actual revenue Mozilla makes. Even if your numbers are accurate, 5 million is a lot of money to an individual but hardly a drop in the bucket for a large concern like Mozilla.
When it comes to threads on video codecs, you are the biggest propaganda machine I've ever seen. Seems to me you've got a lot of nerve referring to anyone else's posts as "propaganda" or implying that others are twisting the truth to their own ends.
Pot, meet Kettle.
It's not clear to me that Mozilla would need to pay anything if it only used decoders that come bundled with the OS. If Mozilla wanted to go the whole 9 yards, though, $5M per year shouldn't be insurmountable from donations.
Here are the h.264 license terms:
http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/...rmsSummary.pdf
I don't see the world jumping on VP8 until there are HW decoders. Even if it was better codec than H.264 without that integral part added to all HW it's dead in the water.
Mozilla doesn't have to do anything with H.264 and Firefox users can still get their browser to play back H.264 videos. Either an x264 plugin designed by users or using the OS' H.264 implementation. I figure the former will happen first.
I see Google clearly trying to make a longterm play for the future of the web but the shirt term goal is just going to lead to confusion. We had people that expected LightPeak on the last Mac releases and LTE iPhone last year so I'm sure we'll get people expecting more "miracles" to happen on this front, too.
In a few years is where this VP8 gets interesting. It will have a chance to get mature, to get all the number crinkles ironed out and potentially give MPEG-LA a scare that makes H.264 cost free for all browsers and sites that wish to use it. This is what I think is Google's play here. They want H.264 to become free and are using a slightly inferior free codec to force their hand. If not, then they'll have codec that is 6 years more mature to fallback back on. it's a win-win situation for them.
PS: I also expect patent lawsuits to pop up regarding VP8.
The question seems to now be why did Google decide on the VP8 WebM codex?
Well, it wasn't quality or compression. It wasn't that it was worried about the encumberment of MPEG LA, because it knew damn well that this will attract lots of lawsuits. If they were so worried about Firefox, I'm sure they could have licensed it in perpetuity for way less than $131 million, which is what they paid for the "unemcumbered" VP*. Part of it is a completely retrograde way to keep Flash in the game.
Think back to before Macs could play less than a third of web video. You could play Real and Windows Media, up to a point only. When the "Advanced" Windows Media 9 came out, we were left alone. Only Flash could fill in the gaps, so that websites would only have to post one version for all. Well, for mobiles, that sucks. Much faster (and simpler) is HTML 5 (open) and the H.264 codec. See, if you standardize, things work very well with video. The codec is completely scalable, from Blu-ray video to the smallest of web video. Same codec.
So, if they wanted to help, they would have just paid Firefox's royalties. Much cheaper than unleashing this crap and confusion on the net. Why? Well, they're following Sony's rules: if you make a new format, you build yourself a world all to yourself. And, wonderfully, magically, this is "free!" Good advertising word, that.
*facepalms* Bad move, Steve. At least after writing that Flash article.
regardless what you think. WebM is still "closed" in the sense that it is controlled by Google. Google will always have the final say about what happens to it, unlike H264 which is controlled by a standard body.
in other shocking news, the sky is blue.
No it's not it's only a trick of the brain.
Its Republicans way or no way!
Its Apples way or no way!!!!!!!!
Apple is doing same what republican's are doing.
Saying 'No'.
You might want to take a look at a (reputable) poll or two.
To the author of the article:
The slant in this news story, and many on this site, is astonishing. Why do people feel the need to defend Apple in everything? They're a business with their own vested interests, they're in this to make money and protect their interest...not to be a humanitarian company. Try being more being more objective. This site reads like a state newspaper in China or Pravda. Apple's side of the story is presented in detail, then a token reference to the other side is made followed by a slew of opinions stated as fact to discredit them. You guys can do better.
When it starts to bother you, just remember: There is no spoon.
In other words, PR Agents are everywhere Neo. Ignore the writer in the red dress.
Why not just buy out MPEG LA, release H.264 for widespread use and be done with it?
Google spent over $100 million to buy On2, in order to give VP8 away. I think it's a legitimate question to ask how much money they would have needed to pay to MPEG LA to cover all of their probable royalty revenues, in order to make H264 effectively unencumbered.
Google spent over $100 million to buy On2, in order to give VP8 away. I think it's a legitimate question to ask how much money they would have needed to pay to MPEG LA to cover all of their probable royalty revenues, in order to make H264 effectively unencumbered.
$100M wouldn't scratch the surface of buying them off. Some members of the consortium might not want to be bought out at any price, if they feared the level playing field it created would completely undermine their business model.
I'm sorry, but what?
To the author of the article:
The slant in this news story, and many on this site, is astonishing. Why do people feel the need to defend Apple in everything? They're a business with their own vested interests, they're in this to make money and protect their interest...not to be a humanitarian company. Try being more being more objective. This site reads like a state newspaper in China or Pravda. Apple's side of the story is presented in detail, then a token reference to the other side is made followed by a slew of opinions stated as fact to discredit them. You guys can do better.
You must be a Google employee or supporter. You try to present Google as a humanitarian company when in fact Google is evil. Google tries to undermine other companies' businesses buy giving out crapy illegal imitations in order to make a buck selling advertising. Google is in the process of destroying itself by poorly imitating everybody else for a buck in advertising. This model will not work. Google needs to innovate.
http://doom10.org/compare/vp8.png
http://doom10.org/compare/x264.png
http://doom10.org/compare/x264baseline.png
http://doom10.org/compare/xvid.png
GIF was already supported by every browser and in wide use before PNG even became a possibility. h.264 is only supported by 13% of the browsers on the Internet, so it has hardly become ubiquitous.
I don't think anyone will argue that VP8 is technically superior to h.264, but we need some sort of format that doesn't have license fees associated with it if it is supposed to be adopted across all browsers.
But Jobs *allegedly* only referred to a critical article as reflecting his opinion on V8.
To me this suggests that "Apple thinks Google's V8 video codec is flawed and risky" would be a way more appropriate heading.
Especially since a heading like the current, copied to sites like Macsurfer and the likes, will make many people think that Apple will be treating WebM like Flash, which I think would cause unneccessary PR problems for Apple.
Moreover:
It might be time for AI to take alleged mails from Jobs a bit less seriously. You guys are making it seem like the CEO of America's 3rd largest company's first responsibility is to answer customer mails 24/7...
That's precisely the problem. Why would you want to jump into a pool of uncertainty when you don't have to?...
yes, that is precisely the problem... with all but the MPEG LA group. MPEG LA is a known quantity. Who is complaining about mpeg2 video for DVD's, mp4 video, mp3 audio, aac audio? Codecs used within them will always come and go. but H.264 is the official codec put together by this known group of technologists (this same group that we have happily relied on for other adopted and proven technologies). They are pushing the envelope; they want to be unencumbered by rogue patent trolls; they are pooling their efforts; and their efforts are producing good results that need to generate some return.
Likely, the licensing fees will always remain reasonable because the MPEG group will want to keep a simple, sustained and useable framework.
As was pointed out in the article about GIF, it is the supposedly free technologies that become the pool of uncertainty after they are widely adopted. Why would you want to jump into that pool of uncertainty when you don't have to? What for? For a less capable and less mature technology that has to navigate around the MPEG patents anyway? (and whatever other unknown ones are there ready to spring up). It is the MPEG group that are proving the value of their research and breakthroughs, and they are not sitting in an ivory tower somewhere.
Google does not appear to have done its due diligence on this and they are ostensibly jumping on the "Freedom" bandwagon when their record shows them to be less concerned about private data and freedoms than others, such as Apple for one (who are going to protect data going to advertisers as much as possible and whose computers don't phone home or make you verify your software every other minute).
In this type of situation, Apple's motivations are usually patently clear, whether you agree with them or not. Google on the other hand, seems to reveal itself as the murkier pool of uncertainty by the minute.